Brain image co-registration is useful in brain image processing and analysis. Neuroimage co-registration is often a prerequisite for advanced neuroimage processing and visualization. The co-registered images may be taken from the same patient (intra-patient), at different times, under different conditions, or using different imaging techniques (modalities).
There are conventional techniques for registering brain images. For example, three dimensional (3D) brain images have been registered by aligning their centroids and principal axes, or by surface fitting which minimizes the average distance between the contours extracted from two scanned images. However, these techniques provide unsatisfactory results when the scanned images are incomplete or when the directions of the principal axes in an image are inaccurately determined (e.g. because of artifacts). In another conventional technique, the images are registered by aligning imaged anatomical landmarks. However, sometimes it is difficult or impossible to detect accurately anatomical landmarks, when the images have a low resolution, or there is no manifestation of the landmarks in the image at all (e.g. when the image is a non-morphological one). Typical conventional registration techniques for three dimensional images are based on voxel analysis and require extensive computing resources.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide an alternative registration technique that can provide relatively more accurate alignment when the registered images are of a low resolution or are incomplete. It is also desirable to provide a registration technique that requires relatively less extensive computation.